


Librarianship and Other Equations

by burglebezzlement



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Beanstalk - Freeform, F/M, Getting Together, Library of Requirement, Multi, OT3, Sentient architecture, Sleeping Beauty Elements, The Library, ToT: Chocolate Box, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-22 10:54:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8283362
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: Cassandra, Jake, and Ezekiel are a balanced team of three, until they aren’t. Or: The Library has a secret tea stash, a magical seed library, and endless jobs for its Librarians. It also has a plan.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tuesday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/gifts).



> I was delighted to get a chance to play around with The Librarians -- it's such a fun canon. Hope you enjoy. Happy Trick or Treat!

The Library is bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

It hurts Cassandra’s head, the first time they get inside, properly inside, and she starts thinking about it. There are more dimensions than can fit inside even her head, and the math just doesn’t work out. She’s trapped until Jake comes up and breaks her out of it, reminding her of the taste of burnt toast, the feeling of peanut butter, the smell of oranges.

She learns to stop thinking about it by the second week. Learns to let the enormity of the problem slide over her mind. Learns not to try to pull the teasing strings of the Library’s impossibilities. 

They all learn to navigate the Library, much faster than they’d thought they could. Its organization bears no resemblance to the Dewey Decimal System. They navigate instead by other directions, by older compasses. By truth and by fiction, by magic and by science.

* * *

Cassandra tries to find an apartment outside the Library, in the city. The process is a messy snarl of Craigslist ads and For Rent signs that doesn’t take her anywhere. She’s interviewed for three shared roommate apartments ( _Seeking quiet female professional_ ) and a self-proclaimed Geek Haus ( _for geeks who know how to party_ ) and a tiny basement apartment below an elderly lady whose relatives really just want someone there to look after her. “I travel for work,” Cassandra tells them, helplessly, and she’s not surprised when they call her a few days later to tell her the apartment’s been rented. 

So when she’s wandering through the Library’s annexes, looking for a book on mathematical theory that she could swear she saw in the card catalogue, but can’t remember the title of — when she finds the doorway, buried deep in the Mathematics section, between Unreal Geometries and Topological Paradoxes — when she opens it, and finds a tiny apartment, with a kitchen, and a bathroom with a deep, deep tub, and a bedroom with a soft bed and a window that magically looks out on a view of a town green somewhere in the countryside —

“I’ll take it,” Cassandra tells the Library, and the next time she comes back, all her things have been mysteriously moved in.

The Library provides.

* * *

Of the three of them, Ezekiel’s the one who leaves the Library most often. Sometimes he says he’s going out stealing, muttering about keeping his hand in, but usually when he leaves, it’s to bring back food, which he seems to pay for. Cassandra asks him for coffee, and he complains about it, because he’s Ezekiel, but he still brings her back lattes flavored with syrups that he finds disgusting and swears should be illegal. 

Jenkins shows Cassandra the Library’s secret tea stash. The second time she goes down, to bring him back his oolong, a new section has been added, with coffee and bottles of flavorings. 

Ezekiel still brings Cassandra lattes, sometimes, when he comes back from a food run. But now they both know he’s doing it to be nice to her.

* * *

The Library is the first to know when Jake and Cassandra get together. 

They’ve been dancing around it for so long, both of them scared to take the leap, until Jake almost dies on what should be a routine mission from the Clippings Book and Cassandra thinks _this is it, this is your life, and you may not get that much more of it_. After the blood’s been mopped up, she asks him out for coffee. Coffee turns into dinner, and then Jake asks her back to his place. 

In the morning, they wake up and discover that the Library has merged their apartments. Cassandra’s soft blue-green carpet runs into Jake’s hand-knotted Persian rug. Her flowered bedspread is on his carved wooden bedframe. 

“I didn’t plan this,” Cassandra says, after they’ve figured out what’s going on. 

She’s not sure how she feels. Mostly, she’s trying to let her mind skate over the fact that the Library kept two front doors to their new apartment — hers, going out to the math sections, and Jake’s, which leads to the art history rooms. The sections of the Library are far apart and her brain wants to leap into the problem, solve the topological tangle, but she’ll get caught in the knots if she does.

“Nobody plans for the Library,” Jake says. He’s relaxed, more relaxed than Cassandra’s seen him before. He reaches over, takes her hand. “I’m here for this if you are.”

She thinks about it. Thinks about the way Jake rescues her when she’s trapped by her own mind. Thinks about his gentle hands, and his low voice, and the way her spine tingles when he looks at her.

The equation has a simple solution. She is.

* * *

Ezekiel disappears for three days after they officially tell the team that they’re a couple. When he gets back, there’s an obsidian skull in the Hall of Dangerous Artifacts that wasn’t there before. 

Cassandra doesn’t ask.

She starts getting all her coffee from the room where Jenkins keeps his tea and his biscuits, which now also has Jake’s beer and Eve’s ginseng energy drinks in an old-fashioned refrigerator that’s shown up in the corner. 

It would be awkward if they let it, but Cassandra’s not letting it. She throws herself into the mysteries. They capture a Fae smuggler who’s bringing pixie dust into a beauty pageant to grant contestants wishes (with horrible consequences). Eve tangles with Morgan le Fay again, and Cassandra gets another glimpse of the Ladies of the Lake, plus a nosebleed when she sets a spell trap. Morgan slips away, and Jenkins is angry for weeks. 

The Librarians prevent two Apocalypses and one End of Days, in various ways, always by working together. But there’s something that’s not right about the three of them. Something off-kilter.

“We’re not working together like we used to,” Cassandra says, one night. They’re lying in bed — Jake’s bed, Cassandra’s bedding, under the skylight that the Library brought from Jake’s rooms. There’s stars framed in the glass, impossible stars glowing like a cloud of dust.

Jake nods. He slowly strokes her shoulder. 

They stare up, and Cassandra wonders. It’s like Ezekiel’s orbit has been perturbed, and now he’s flying away from them, out from their solar system into the cold and the dark until a case pulls him back. 

Cassandra doesn’t like these equations. She doesn’t think Jake does, either. But she’s not sure what to do about it.

* * *

Grain moths infest the magical seed library down on Level Two, and Jake and Ezekiel spend three days fumigating the rooms. 

During the cleanup, one of the seeds accidentally gets planted outside. Jake and Cassandra wake up a few mornings later when Eve comes barging into their rooms. 

“There’s a big-ass beanstalk outside,” she says. “Get dressed.”

When they get outside, the beanstalk is taller than the bridge, spiraling up into the distant clouds. They get equipment from the Library and start climbing. 

By the time they’re at the clouds, Cassandra’s quads are shaking from the climb, and her hands are sticky with sap from where they had to carve into the beanstalk to make handholds.

Jake’s the one who tricks the giant into posing them a riddle. Ezekiel’s the one who solves it. And when the beanstalk falls before they can escape the giant’s cloud, Cassandra’s the one who crafts them parachutes out of thistledown and magic. 

“Good show,” Ezekiel says, after they touch down by the bridge.

He’s standing there like he didn’t just join them in defeating a giant, looking at the two of them, standing together. Cassandra aches to hug him, but the moment passes, and then he’s gone.

* * *

There’s a journal that only lets you write the truth, and turns the lives of a small town upside down. There’s a pair of running shoes that someone borrowed from Hermes, shoes that make you into the greatest runner in the world at a terrible price. There’s a trip to Eve’s old military school, where a cadet has made a deal with a demon to win the annual war games. 

Ezekiel’s still there, still orbiting back into Jake and Cassandra’s circle for the job, and then orbiting away again. 

Cassandra doesn’t wonder where he’s hiding. He’s a thief; space is one of the easiest things for him to steal. And the Library will help you stay hidden, if that’s what you want.

* * *

In between cases, they sort through books and magical items and help keep the Library running. There’s a lot the Library can do on its own, but it still needs its Librarians, its hands and minds. 

Ezekiel’s sorting through artifacts in one of the storerooms when he pricks his finger and falls into a magical sleep.

“A spindle,” Eve says, as she lowers Ezekiel gently onto one of Jenkins’ cots. “You’re telling me Jones pricked himself on a spindle. Like Sleeping Beauty.”

“A drop spindle,” Jenkins says. “Contrary to the Grimm brothers’ misapprehensions, flax wheels are not sharp.”

“So what do we do?” Jake asks. He sits down on a chair beside Ezekiel and takes his hand. It’s motionless. 

Cassandra’s stomach churns while she tries to think of a math problem she can solve to fix this. There’s nothing. Even with their triangle unbalanced, they’ve always needed Ezekiel there — always needed the three of them.

“It could be very simple,” Jenkins says. He turns to Cassandra and Jake. “Do you happen to know if Mr. Jones has been seeing anyone?”

“Seeing — like dating someone?” Jake shakes his head. “Nah, man. He wouldn’t tell us about that.”

“He’s not,” Eve says, quietly, and the way she looks at Jake and Cassandra suggests that Ezekiel’s been talking to her about it.

“That’s unfortunate,” Jenkins says. He looks down at Ezekiel. “The traditional cure is true love’s kiss, but that was easier to come by back in the days when princes were conditioned to fall in love at first sight.”

True love’s kiss. Cassandra’s unhelpful equations fall away from her eyes. 

True love — she’s not sure. But this is life and she’s going to live it, making the choices she wants. If there’s anything that can bring Ezekiel back, that’s the choice she’s going to make.

Cassandra looks over at Jake. He’s already looking at her. His eyes are steady.

She raises one eyebrow, and he nods. “Do it.”

_Here goes nothing._

Cassandra bends down, brushing back her hair before touching her lips to Ezekiel’s. His lips are cold, like he’s made of ice, and she’s so sure she was wrong — that this isn’t going to work — but then there’s the barest hint of movement under her lips, and then heat rushes back into Ezekiel’s face.

She pulls back, watching Ezekiel’s eyes open.

“Cassandra?” He looks up, sees Eve and Jenkins looking on in concern. “Did you — did you just kiss me or something?”

“You were under a spell,” Cassandra says.

“Don’t make it weird, man,” Jake says. He’s still holding Ezekiel’s hand.

Cassandra looks up at Jake. He smiles at her, shy, the way he used to. 

“We’re taking you out for dinner tonight,” Jake says, looking back down at Ezekiel. “The three of us.”

“Really?” Ezekiel sits up, and Jake drops his hand. “The two of you, leaving the library? Voluntarily?”

“Wherever you want,” Cassandra says.

Ezekiel looks between the two of them. “Won’t that be weird?”

Cassandra smiles. “We make the choices. It’s only weird if we want it to be weird.”

Once Ezekiel is ready to get up, he drags them out with him, to a brewpub downtown that he swears is one of the best places in town, and a haven for thieves who’ve learned to walk the high road.

* * *

The kiss makes some things easy, but not everything. Some days Cassandra wonders if the three of them can find a balance, find a place where the three of them work together, pull evenly. 

Other days it feels simple. Jake finds a fraudulent Monet with a compulsion spell worked into its brushstrokes. Ezekiel convinces a golem to let them take a book of magic. Cassandra watches the equations, and they balance.

Cassandra and Jake talk, a lot, and Cassandra and Ezekiel talk, and presumably Ezekiel and Jake talk although Cassandra’s not there for that. She’s not sure how they’re negotiating their relationship but they’re smiling when she sees them together, and that makes her smile too.

Mostly, it’s not weird.

When they tell Eve and Jenkins, Eve’s happy for them. Jenkins rolls his eyes, which Cassandra figures means he thinks they should have figured things out years ago.

* * *

The Library responds more slowly to Jake and Cassandra and Ezekiel then it did to Jake and Cassandra. 

The door appears first. Jake and Cassandra’s apartment stays the same, but now there’s a third front door, leading to Ezekiel’s apartment.

They fight a magical plague together, one that draws its power from strife and arguments, and afterwards, they go out through the Library’s magical door to Ezekiel’s hometown so Ezekiel can show them his favorite pie shop. They defeat a coven of techno-warlocks with Ezekiel’s hacking and Cassandra’s math and Jake’s right hook, and then they have lunch outside, in the grass, with Eve and Flynn and Jenkins.

On the day when the Library finally merges their separate spaces, Cassandra finds herself wondering why Ezekiel was in that storeroom that day. Why it was Ezekiel who found the spindle, why the spindle was out of its case, and why it was Ezekiel who needed that kiss. 

She wonders just how much the Library knows about them. Whether the Library can think, or whether it operates on instinct. The need for protection. And maybe the feeling of love. 

The Library needs its Librarians, and the Library provides.


End file.
